Flames From the Unconscious: Trauma, Madness, and Faith. By Michael Eigen. London:  Karnac Books, 2009,  158 pp. Contact With The Depths. By Michael Eigen. London:  Karnac Books, 2011,  135 pp.

Michael Eigen is a psychoanalytic thinker to be reckoned with. A prolific and fluent writer with a unique literary style, he makes us aware of three intertwined components of human existence: (1) the individual personality who in Nietzschean cycles of eternal return suffers and questions the meaning of existence; (2) the interconnectedness of all that is human, especially the interpenetration of patient and analyst; and (3) the sense of mystical union that Eigen perceives as a living presence in the consulting room and life itself. Accepting contradiction, he weaves together the biosocial paradigm central to Freud with mysticospiritual understanding that goes back to Jung. So when you read his writing, you feel that you are hearing simultaneously from a passionately questioning Talmudic scholar (Eigen, in his 1998 work The Psychoanalytic Mystic, acknowledges such influences) and a student of human nature and development who richly understands character defenses and how they play out in the psychotherapy process.

In two recent releases from Karnac Books, Flames from the Unconscious: Trauma, Madness, and Faith and Contact with the Depths, Eigen draws the reader into the belly of the beast while maintaining sufficient observational capacity and knowledge to be objectively convincing. Both